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Its History 



S2>^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. P7*^ 

Shelf V S^^B^ 

PRESENTED BY 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



The Wayside Inn 

Its History and Literature 



AN ADDRESS 

Delivered before the 

SOCIETY OF 
COLONIAL WARS 

at the 

Wayside Inn, Sjdtiury, Massachusetts 
June 17, 1897 



SAMUEL ARTHUR BENT 
Member of the Council 



y^m OF CONG^^ 



Boston 
1897 



THE WAYSIDE INN, ITS HISTORY AND 
LITERATURE. 



Mr. Governor and Gentlemen: 

This old town of Sudbury, to which on an anniversary- 
dear to Massachusetts we make our summer pilgrimage, 
was one of the earliest inland settlements of the Bay 
Colony, The population on tide water was pressed by 
increasing immigration as early as 1637, ^r^^i in that year 
it was proposed that a company should proceed westward 
from Watertown, "owing," as the record has it, "to 
straitness of accommodation and want of more meadow." 
Concord was already settled to the northward, and when 
in 1638 men of Watertown and Cambridge pushed their 
way into the wilderness, they formed the nineteenth town- 
ship in the Colony, obtaining the grant of a tract of land 
five miles square, bounded east by Watertown, that part 
now Weston, north by Concord, south and west by the 
wilderness. Their route had been, however, already 
marked out for them. Through the south-east corner of 
their settlement passed the Indian trail, or the " old Con- 
necticut path," along this very road from the sea-board 
to Connecticut, by which the ministers Hooker, Stone, 
their companions and families, had already journeyed 
towards the settlement of Hartford. 

Our settlers were joined here by others coming direct 
from England, several of them, Haynes, Noyes, Bent, 



4 THE WAYSIDE INN, 

Rutter, and Goodenow, fellow-passengers in the " good 
shipp ' Confidence ' " sailing from Southampton, April 
24, 1638, meeting on this common settling-ground Stone, 
of Cambridge, Parmenter, Treadway, Pelham, and Browne, 
of Watertown, and here, to the number of fifty-four, build- 
ing their cabins looking into the darkness of the wilder- 
ness beyond. 

It was natural that they should ask their pastor, the 
Rev. Edmund Browne, to name their settlement. He 
had come from England in 1637, and from his early 
home in Sufifolkshire or from that of some of his family 
he called the town Sudbury, which was confirmed by the 
General Court in 1639 in the act of incorporation. And 
not only did he name it Sudbury, but he gave another 
Suffolk name to a section of it, Lanham, from the town 
spelled Lavenham, but pronounced Lanham on the other 
side of the water. 

There exists no record of the dimensions of any of 
the first dwelling-houses of Sudbury, but we may judge 
something of their size by the specifications in a lease of 
a house to be built by Edmund Rice prior to the year 
1655. It was certainly a very small house, "thirty foot 
long, ten foot high, one foot sill from the ground, sixteen 
foot wide, with two rooms, both below or one above the 
other, all the doors, walls, stairs with convenient fixtures 
and well planked under foot, and boarded sufficiently to 
lay corn in the story above head." Their earliest dwell- 
ings may have been even simpler, with the most scanty 
furniture, teaming being difficult from Watertown over 
the new road to Sudbury. 

Sudbury had rich natural advantages for a successful 
settlement. The town was well watered ; the heavy 
timber covering much of the land was free from under- 
brush ; wild fowl, turkeys, pigeons, grouse, were plentiful ; 
game was abundant, in the pursuit of which the Indians 



ITS HISTORY AND LITERATURE. 5 

had made clearings ; while broad meadows lined the river 
and brooks. The settlers were all young men, the emi- 
grants from England were also in the prime of manhood, 
and for many years not an old man was to be seen in the 
settlement. They prospered within their own limits, and 
pushed still further, sending their sons into the wilderness 
to build up other settlements ; to Worcester, Grafton, and 
Rutland, forming municipalities within their own borders 
or adjacent to them, as Framingham and Marlborough. 
But one cloud rested upon their horizon, threatening them 
as all frontier and outpost settlements, until the storm of 
Indian invasion burst upon them, and every habitation, 
save sheepcotes, was swept into destruction. 

Among the early settlers was one John How, a glover 
by trade. He was admitted a freeman in 1641 and was 
chosen selectman the next year. In 1655 he was 
appointed " to see to the restraining of youth on the 
Lord's day." He was a petitioner for Marlborough 
plantation in 1657, moved there about the same year, and 
was elected a selectman. He was the first tavern keeper 
in that town, having a public house as early as 1661. 
" At this ordinary," says the historian of Sudbury, " his 
grandson, who afterwards kept the Sudbury Red Horse 
Tavern, may have been favorably struck with the occupa- 
tion of an innholder and thus led to establish the busi- 
ness at Sudbury." 

The proximity of John How's house in Marlborough 
to the Indian plantation brought him into direct con- 
tact with his savage neighbors, and by his kindness he 
gained their confidence and good will, and they accord- 
ingly not only respected his rights, but often made him 
their umpire in cases of difficulty. He acquired, I have 
read, the reputation of a Solomon by his decision of a 
dispute where a pumpkin vine sprang up within the 
premises of one Indian and the fruit ripened upon the 



6 THE WAYSIDE INN, 

land of another. The question of the ownership of the 
pumpkin was referred to him, when he called for a knife 
and divided the fruit, giving half to each claimant. This 
struck the parties as the perfection of justice, and fixed 
the impartiality of the judge on an immutable basis. 
John How died in 1680, at the age of seventy-eight 
years, and left an estate valued at ;^5 1 1 . 

His son Samuel, a carpenter by trade, born in 1642, 
married, in 1663, Martha Bent, daughter of John Bent, of 
Sudbury, the first of that name ; and later widow Clapp, of 
Hingham. He is described as a man of great energy and 
public spirit. He could at any rate have given points to 
any real estate dealer of the present day on the expansive 
power of the English language as applied to land, as will 
be seen from the following incident. He entered into a 
land speculation with one Gookin, of Cambridge, sheriff 
of Middlesex County, a son of Major Gookin, well known 
as a writer, soldier, and friend of the Christian Indians. 
They bought, in 1682, of the Natick Indians a tract said 
in the deed to contain ** by estimation two hundred acres 
more or less." The western boundary was not specified 
in the deed, and the words " more or less," when applied 
to " waste land," so called, were understood to give the 
purchaser a wide latitude. How and Gookin accordingly 
took possession of all the unoccupied land between Cochit- 
uate pond on the east and Sudbury river on the west, 
parcelled it out, and sold lots from time to time to bona 
fide purchasers. The Indians at length became dissatisfied 
and complained to the General Court of encroachments 
upon the grant of 1682. How and Gookin submitted to a 
committee of the court their deed, and a writing from 
some of the Indians for an enlargement of the grant, and 
a receipt for money paid in consideration thereof. The 
committee found that under these writings How and 
Gookin had sold i,Too acres north of the Worcester 



ITS HISTORY AND LITERATURE. / 

turnpike, which was confirmed by the General Court, 
and i,ooo acres south of the turnpike, which was not 
allowed, but remained in possession of the Indians, and 
later became a factor in a land controversy between the 
towns of Sherborn and Framingham. 

In 1702 Samuel How gave his son David, born in 1674, 
a tract of one hundred and thirty acres of the so-called 
" new grant " of Sudbury, and on one of the lots of this 
grant, bounded easterly on the highway and westerly by 
Marlborough, David How began immediately to build a 
house. During its erection tradition says that the work- 
men resorted at night for protection against Indian 
attacks to the Parmenter garrison house, half a mile 
away. Soon after its construction How opened it as a 
public house, the fifth tavern on the road from Boston 
westwards. In a letter to an English lady, dated Dec. 
28, 1863, Longfellow gives his version of the genesis of 
this house. " Some two hundred years ago," he says, 
" an Enghsh family by the name of Howe built there (in 
Sudbury) a country house, which has remained in the 
family down to the present time, the last of the race 
dying about two years ago. Losing their fortune, they 
became innkeepers, and for a century the Red Horse has 
flourished, going down from father to son. The place is 
just as I have described it, though no longer an inn. All 
this will account for the landlord's coat of arms, and his 
being a justice of the peace, and his being known as the 
squire, things that must sound strange in English ears." 
That a man of good familj'' should open a public house 
in the early days of our New England towns would not 
to those who have read the history of the times need 
either explanation or apology. The institution of taverns 
in these towns followed quickly upon their settlement. 
Being a recognized need in a new and thinly settled 
country, no one thought of speaking of them as an evil, 



8 THE WAYSIDE INN, 

or even as a necessary evil. That travellers and sojourners 
might be provided for, taverns were licensed by the 
General Court as fast as new villages sprang up. Super- 
vision was strict, as the spirit of a patriarchal community 
founded on morals would require. An innkeeper was not 
then looked upon as a person who was pursuing a dis- 
graceful or immoral calling. He was generally a respon- 
sible and respectable member of the village community. 
His house, closely watched by the constable, whose busi- 
ness it was to know everybody else's business, became a 
landmark for the community. Streets in towns like 
Boston were named from the taverns situated on them, 
and in the country the signs which bore the rude effigy 
of a horse or a bull, a star or a sun, were hailed by the 
weary traveller as offering " all the comforts of home." 

Nor do I find that David How was compelled by a 
reverse of fortune to open his house to the public. He 
was one of a family of thirteen children of Samuel How. 
One of the local historians says that these thirteen made 
an assignment in 1714, the year in which, according to 
some authorities, the house was opened. No such 
assignment is on record in Middlesex County, so far as 
I can discover. The administrator of Samuel How's 
estate certified to the injury it would receive if divided 
among so many heirs, and administration was accord- 
ingly continued for several years. I am told by Mr. 
Homer Rogers, who bought this estate after the death of 
the last Howe, that in examining the title for the first deed 
of the property for nearly two hundred years no record 
of any assignment, attachment, or other incumbrance 
was found upon it. 

It may be supposed that David How, one of so large a 
family, found it necessary to earn his living by a respect- 
able calling, and the business of his grandfather in Marl- 
borough would naturally suggest that of an innkeeper. 



ITS HISTORY AND LITERATURE. 9 

He accordingly opened his house to the public, not the 
first man in Sudbury to do so, but destined to eclipse 
them all in the celebrity of his inn and the fame of his 
descendants. His house, then called simply " How's 
Tavern in Sudbury" to distinguish it from How's Tavern 
in Marlborough, soon became known. Thus in 17 16 
Judge Sewall records in his diary that he started with a 
friend for Springfield on the 27th of April. He says he 
" treated at N. Sparhawk's, got to How's in Sudbury 
about one-half hour by the sun." The original house 
was a small one, generally supposed, says Mr. Rogers, to 
be the L in the rear of the present edifice, although 
others speak of some part of it as standing as late as 
1829, implying that the original structure has by this 
time disappeared. 

David How kept the tavern until his death in 1746, 
when it passed into the hands of his son Ezekiel, by 
whom it was enlarged as increased business made 
necessary. Receiving the custom of the great highway 
and mail route from Boston westward, the old inn of one 
story was merged in a more elaborate structure of two 
stories with a gambrel roof and arms spreading on either 
side, receiving through its seventy-nine windows alike 
the summer's and the winter's sun.^ 

Its new proprietor christened his inn the " Red Horse 
Tavern," to distinguish it from the " Black Horse " of 
Marlborough, and hung in front of it a sign, one side 
of which bore the effigy of a fiery steed, while on the 
other were later seen the initials of the first three owners : 

D. H 1686 

E. H 1746 

A. Howe 1796 

'The photograph, of which the frontispiece is a reproduction, was taken June 
17, 1897, by Mr. Arthur Cecil Thomson, of the Society of Colonial Wars. 



lO THE WAYSIDE INN, 

For years this sign swung to the breeze and bore the 
heat of summer and the blasts of winter, and was un- 
doubtedly showing its weather-beaten and half-obliterated 
features when Longfellow saw it on the visit which was to 
immortalize the Red Horse Tavern as the ** Wayside 
Inn," for he included it in the picture of the house : 

" Half effaced by rain and shine 
The Red Horse prances on the sign." 

But the old sign has disappeared just as the old name 
gave way to the newer title. 

It was during the incumbency, if I may use the word, 
of Ezekiel How that a price list was established at Sud- 
bury for various commodities, and the following tariff for 
taverns would not tempt our new proprietor of 1897 to 
embark in a business which promised so little profit on 
the financial basis of the last century. It reads thus : 



Mug best India flip 


IS 


New England do . 


12 


Toddy in proportion 




A good dinner 


20 


Common do . 


12 


Best supper and breakfast 


15 each 


Common do . 


12 


Lodging 


4 



I cannot as one " to the manner born " describe this 
house, with its many rooms given to public use and its 
apartments private to the landlord's family. 

Entering the house and turning to the right, we find the 
tap-room, in the most ancient-looking part of the house. 
In one corner over the bar is the wooden portcullis, which 
rose to the call for refreshments, or fell as trade was dull. 



ITS HISTORY AND LITERATURE. II 

We still see the ancient floor, worn more deeply than in 
any other room, overhead the heavy timbers, the very 
oak of which is seasoned with the spicy vapor of the 
steaming flagons. Upstairs you are shown the travellers' 
rooms which those of lesser note occupied in common, 
and the state chamber still decorated with its wall paper 
of blue-bells, where tradition says Lafayette slept on his 
journey to Boston, in 1824. Above in the garret the 
slaves were accommodated, and when Indian invasion was 
feared grain was stored there against a siege. In one of 
the upper rooms was the dance hall, which was later 
placed in an annex to the ancient building. In the more 
modern room the dais still stands at one end for the 
players, the wooden benches are still fixed to the walls, 
the floor is smoothly polished by feet once swiftly trip- 
ping in the old-fashioned contra dances or the stately 
minuet. Gone are the dancers, silent is the violin, over 
all the place for thirty years has reigned a solemn still- 
ness save when it is broken by the sweet voices of Nature 
and Nature's offspring, or, as Parsons sang of it : 

"The 'scutcheon is faded that hangs on the wall, 
And the hearth looks forlorn in the desolate hall ; 
And the floor that has bent with the minuet's tread 
Is like a church pavement — the dancers are dead." 

Could we have passed a day under the hospitable roof 
of the Red Horse Tavern one hundred and fifty years 
ago, those four and twenty hours would have enrolled 
before us a perfect picture of New England life. Long 
before daylight our sleep would have been disturbed by 
the rumbling of the heavy market wagons, taking to 
Boston produce of the garden and the farm from western 
Massachusetts, even from New York, and from intermedi- 
ate places along the route. Later in the day we should see 



12 THE WAYSIDE INN, 

them filling with heavy wheels and large canvastops the 
spacious lawn in front of the house, returning empty from 
their destination, their drivers refreshing themselves in the 
tap-room while their horses were baited in the barns. On 
our descent for breakfast the music of a horn winding 
through the valley announced the arrival of the mail- 
coach from Boston, which started on its journey at three 
o'clock in the morning, its inmates silent like so many 
shadows, until the rising sun clothed them with forms and 
touched them like Memnon's statue with speech. The 
black stable-boys rushed to take out the horses, the maids 
stood attendant behind the tables hot with the morning 
fare, mine host himself, erect in military dignity, stood at 
the door as the travellers emerged from their pent-up 
quarters, cramped and dusty and eager to break their fast 
after a journey of three and twenty good English miles 
from the Town House in Boston. Before the tavern was 
opened this road was a mail route; in fact, from 1704, 
when appeared the first newspaper in America, a western 
post was carried with greater or less regularity, and travel- 
lers availed themselves of the post rider's company over 
a tedious and sometimes dangerous road. It was in such 
company that Madame Knight made her famous journey 
on horseback from Boston to New York in the very year 
we have mentioned, 1704, and in the curious account of 
it which she wrote, she says that at Mr. Haven's ^ she 
could get no sleep because of the clamor of some of the 
" town topers " in the next room, discussing over their 
cups the signification of the Indian word " Narragansett." 
So she says that she finally fell to her old way of compos- 
ing her resentment as follows : 

** I ask thy aid, O potent Rum, 
To charm these wrangling topers dum. 

1 A tavern in what is now North Kingston, R.I. 



ITS HISTORY AND LITERATURE. 1 3 

Thou hast their giddy brains possest — 
The man confounded with the beast — 
And I, poor I, can get no rest. 
Intoxicate them with thy fumes, 
O still their tongues till morning comes ! " 

" And I know not," she adds, " but my wishes took 
effect ; for the dispute soon ended with t'other dram ; and 
so good-night! " 

Returning now to our inn, when the mail-coach had 
pursued its journey with a refreshed and consequently 
better-natured company, a travelling chariot with four 
well-groomed bays, coachman and footman in livery, 
with trim lady's maid and prim duenna, caused even a 
greater sensation than the more plebeian mail-coach with 
its heterogeneous company. A dainty lady, dressed in 
the fashion of the day, alighted for an hour's refreshment, 
amid the open-mouthed wonder of the onlookers, just as 
some years later Dorothy Quincy paused on her journey 
to Bridgeport to meet John Hancock, whom she married 
at Mr. Burr's, in that distant town. And before she 
started on her way again she exchanged greetings with a 
solemn deputy travelling on horseback from Springfield 
to the General Court, arrayed, like travellers of that time, 
with riding coat and " stirrup-stockings," and well-filled 
saddle-bags. So important a personage Colonel How 
greeted with cordial but respectful familiarity, and invited 
to partake of cheer a little more choice than the ordinary 
traveller could expect even at the famous sign of the 
Red Horse. 

But while the travelling statesman was giving our host 
his views on public affairs a novel sound struck the ear. 
A distant drum brought the boys and the maids and the 
tap-room loafers to doors and windows. Soon the shrill 
music of the wry-necked fife lent the melody of the 



14 THE WAYSIDE INN, 

"Road to Boston" to the rataplan of the drum. Bay- 
onets gleamed in the sunlight striking through the 
heavy foliage of the oaks, and a dusty company of foot 
soldiers tramped along the road. "Halt!" cried the 
captain, opposite the door. Arms were stacked, ranks 
were broken, the landlord showed the officers into the 
room behind the bar, while the men stretched them- 
selves upon the grass under the oaks, which were old 
then, and well grown when, nearly a century earlier, 
Wadsworth and Brocklebank marched under them to 
their glorious death. 

All through our New England history the Red Horse 
was a favorite resting-place of the New England soldiery, 
mindful of its proverbial good cheer. As long ago as 
1724, during Lovewell's war, this tap-room was the ren- 
dezvous of the troop of horse, steel-capped and buff- 
coated, that patrolled the roads hereabout. Later, the 
troops hurrying to the frontier in the French and Indian 
wars, to Ticonderoga and Crown Point, shook the dust 
from what it would be sarcasm to call their " uniforms," 
before this house. Later still, the Worcester minute- 
men, led by Timothy Bigelow, rested here on their 
forced march at the Lexington alarm, until the distant 
rumbling of Percy's cannon hurried them to the front, 
and from still further away Putnam and Arnold and the 
Connecticut militia may have asked their way at this 
house, whose landlord himself had buckled on his sword 
and ridden to the fray with the men of Sudbury. 

Ezekiel How, at the outbreak of hostilities in 1775, was 
lieutenant-colonel of the Fourth Regiment of Middle- 
sex County Militia, of which James Barrett, of Concord, 
was colonel. The next year. May 10, he was chosen by 
the Legislature as colonel of the regiment, and held his 
commission until Jan. 26, 1779, when he resigned. 

At the time of the Lexington alarm, one-fifth of the 



ITS HISTORY AND LITERATURE. 15 

entire population of Sudbury was enrolled in the six 
companies of the town, and the number in actual service 
at Concord and Lexington was three hundred and two. 
Word came between three and four o'clock on the morning 
of the 19th of April to the Sudbury member of the Pro- 
vincial Congress, by an express from Concord, that the 
British were on their way to that town. The church bell 
was rung, musketry was discharged, and by sunrise the 
greater part of the population was notified. The men of 
this town had already received " the baptism of fire." 
They had learned of war since it had been brought to 
their very doors by the savage warriors of King Philip, 
and in the intervening period one hundred names of 
Sudbury's sons are found on the muster rolls of the suc- 
cessive French and Indian wars. 

" The morning of the 19th was unusually fine," wrote 
later a Revolutionary soldier, " and the inhabitants of 
Sudbury never can make such an important appearance 
probably again. Every countenance seemed to discover 
the importance of the event." The Sudbury companies 
took two different routes to Concord, and on their arrival 
two of them, commanded by Captains Nixon and 
Haynes, with Lieutenant-Colonel How, who accompa- 
nied them, started for the old North Bridge. "When 
they came within sight of Colonel Barrett's house they 
halted," says the historian of Sudbury ; " before them 
were the British, engaged in their mischievous work. 
Gun carriages had been collected and piled together to 
be burned, the torch already had been applied, and the 
residence of the colonel had been ransacked. They 
halted, and Colonel How exclaimed, ' If any blood has 
been shed, not one of the rascals shall escape ! ' Dis- 
guising himself, he rode on to ascertain the truth." It 
was probably not far from nine o'clock when this eve^t 
took place, which shows the celerity with which the Sud- 



1 6 THE WAYSIDE INN, 

bury troops had moved, Shattuck, in his history, says 
that two companies from Sudbury, under How, Nixon, 
and Haynes, came to Concord, and having received or- 
ders from a person stationed at the entrance to the town 
to proceed to the North instead of to the South Bridge, 
arrived at Colonel Barrett's just before the British sol- 
diers retreated, which is confirmed by the statement of 
the Revolutionary soldier before quoted, that " the Sud- 
bury companies were but a short distance from the 
North Bridge when the first opposition was made to the 
haughty enemy." At any rate the Sudbury companies 
joined in the pursuit of the retreating British, and in at 
least two of the sharp encounters which occurred, one 
at Merriam's Corner and the other at Hardy's Hill, they 
bravely bore their part. They sustained a loss of two 
men killed and one wounded, and it is an interesting 
fact, mentioned last year in the dedication of the Revo- 
lutionary Soldiers' Monument, that Sudbury possessed 
at this time " a class of men who were exempt from mil- 
itary service because of non-age or old age, or some 
other disability, and that those persons would not be 
kept at home, but went to Concord and Lexington on 
horseback." One of these had a bullet put through his 
coat, the horse of another was shot under him, and Dea- 
con Josiah Haynes, who at the age of seventy-nine years 
had pursued the British towards Lexington, was killed. 

I may be pardoned if, speaking on my ancestral 
although not on my native heath, I mention another 
man, of my own name, the aged Thomas Bent, who went 
to Lexington on horseback, and received a bullet-wound 
in one of his legs, from the effect of which he soon after- 
ward died. Mr. Bent, after being wounded, started for 
his home in East Sudbury, and while on the road met his 
son, a lad in his teens, who, like his three brothers, was 
hurrying to the fray. Instead of asking the boy to 



ITS HISTORY AND LITERATURE. 1 7 

return with his wounded father, he urged him to the 
front, and the boy obeyed and went. 

I do not find that Colonel How took further part in 
the active operations of the Revolution. He continued 
to command his militia regiment, members of which were 
drawn for service in the Continental Army, many of them 
in the regiment commanded by that valiant soldier of 
Framingham and Sudbury, who had won his spurs at 
Louisburg, Colonel, afterwards General, John Nixon, and 
the muster-rolls describe these soldiers as " of the fourth 
regiment of foot, commanded by Col. Ezekiel How." 
On the other hand, the town records show that the col- 
onel, now one of her important citizens, served on com- 
mittees to make up quotas, prepare the muster rolls, and 
" estimate the services of each particular person in Sud- 
bury in the present war." These lists prove the patriotic 
spirit of the town, which had not a Tory within her bor- 
ders, but which with a population of 2,160, being the 
largest town in Middlesex County, with about 500 
ratable polls, sent to different service during the war 
from 400 to 500 men, 100 men in three companies on 
the glorious day which we are now celebrating, others 
later with Washington in New York, against Burgoyne in 
the North, and farther on braving the rigors of a Canadian 
winter, in the attempt to gain Canada to the Continental 
cause. Well might Washington honor this town and this 
inn with a brief visit, stopping here to lunch on his 
triumphal but peaceful progress through New England 
in 1789, shaking hands with one of the heroes of Con- 
cord fight, and recalling to the survivors of the Revo- 
lution their unshaken fidelity to the cause now so 
gloriously victorious. We know what he must have 
said; we echo the words which thrilled the men and 
women who thronged about the " Father of his Country," 
" Honor, eternal honor, to the patriots of Sudbury ! " 



1 8 THE WAYSIDE INN, 

Colonel How died in 1796. In the inventory of his 
estate we find the famous coat of arms appraised at $4, 
his firearms at $8, his library at $10, the clock at $30, 
a silver tankard at $25, and other plate at $30, the home- 
stead with 240 acres of land at $6,500, the entire appraisal 
amounting to $9,531.48. We see by his will that the 
inn then consisted of new and old parts, for it speaks of 
" a new kitchen at the west end of the dwelling-house, 
with the lower room adjoining thereto, also the long 
chamber over the aforesaid room, with the north-west 
bed-chamber in the old part of said dwelling-house." 
He left most of the personal articles before mentioned to 
his "well-beloved granddaughter, Hepsibah Brown," 
and, after many minor legacies, the residue of his estate 
to his third son, Adam How. 

This third proprietor of* the Red Horse Tavern was 
the antiquarian of the family. The ancient coat-of-arms, 
hanging during his boyhood in the parlor of the inn, 
gave his thoughts an heraldic turn, and he was proud of 
the lineage he derived from an English ancestry. Long- 
fellow could have said of him, as of his son, — 

*' Proud was he of his name and race, 
Of old Sir William, and Sir Hugh, 
And in the parlor, full in view, 
His coat-of-arms, well-framed and glazed, 
Upon the wall in colors blazed ; 
He beareth gules upon his shield, 
A chevron argent in the field, 
With three wolfs heads, and for the crest 
A Wyvern part-per-pale addressed 
Upon a helmet barred ; below 
The scroll reads, ' By the name of Howe.' " 

It was Adam How who put into circulation the How 
genealogy, founded on a tradition which traced the 



ITS HISTORY AND LITERATURE. I9 

family from John How of Sudbury, son of John How 
of Watertown, to a Warwickshire ancestor, son of John 
How of Hodinhull, connected with " the most noble 
and puissant Lord Charles How," created Baron How of 
Wormton by James I., and Earl of Lancaster by Charles 
L, and descended from Hugh, a favorite of Edward IL, all 
of which was inscribed among the scrolls and leaves and 
other devices of the coat-of-arms, surmounted by a 
" Wyvern," a two-legged, winged creature, with the head 
of a dragon, an heraldic cockatrice as fabulous as the 
genealogy over which it hissed its vipery head. One of the 
learned historians of Framingham dismisses the genealogy 
by saying he has failed to discover its confirmation in the 
records of Watertown, and Savage condemned the attempt 
to connect this family with a title extinct nearly two hun- 
dred years before the emigration.' But we shall not 
complain if the pale light of tradition continued to play 
around this coat-of-arms as around so many in our New 
England mansions, equally elaborate and imaginary. 

Adam How kept the inn until 1830 and was succeeded 
by his son Lyman, who was born in 1801, and was found 
dead in his bed in 186 1. It is with him and with his 
times that we are brought into more intimate acquaint- 
ance by the genius of Longfellow, who gathered in his 
" Prelude " to the " Tales" the traditions of the house and 
of its proprietors. We read of this last hero of the family 
that Squire Howe, as the name had come to be spelled, 
was a man rather imposing in appearance, somewhat 
dignified and grave. He was at one time leader of the 
choir of the Congregational church, which was assisted in 
its musical efforts before the introduction of organs by a 
violin, bass viol, and clarionet. He was a member of the 
school committee and a justice of the peace, and for 

1 Barry's History of Framingham, 29^, note; Savage's Genealogical Pictionary 
of New England, II., 475, 



20 THE WAYSIDE INN, 

years was a familiar figure to the villagers of South Sud- 
bury, riding in his chaise with the top tipped back, as he 
went to the post-office or to visit the district schools. In 
his younger and more prosperous days he is said to have 
fitly represented the family of Howe, of which, dying 
unmarried, he closed this line. 

On the occasion of the gathering of the Howe family 
in 1 87 1, one of its members wrote : " As a house of enter- 
tainment the inn was always characterized by its good 
order and hospitality, and not less by the sumptuous 
table with which it refreshed the hungry traveller. Be- 
fore the innovation of railroads several stages made their 
daily call at this house, stopping long enough to change 
horses and allow the passengers, often from remote sec- 
tions of the country, sometimes from foreign lands, to 
breakfast and dine." The mention of the introduction 
of railroads brings us to the close of the long career of 
this house as a public resort. As his years increased and 
as travellers were whirled by steam past hill and dale, 
landlord Howe's business became smaller and smaller, 
until his sudden death closed the record of the inn. His 
dirge was sung by a faithful frequenter, Dr. Parsons : 

"Thunder clouds may roll above him, 
And the bolt may rend his oak ; 
Lyman lieth where no longer 
He shall dread the lightning stroke. 

" Never to his father's hostel 
Comes a kinsman or a guest; 
Midnight calls for no more candles ; 
House and landlord both have rest. 



ITS HISTORY AND LITERATURE. 21 

" Fetch my steed ! I cannot linger. 
Buckley, quick ! I must away. 
Good old groom, take thou this nothing; 
Millions could not make me stay." 

After Mr. Howe's death the place was sold with its 
contents. Fabulous tales were told of the rare antique 
furniture and other articles, and of the fancy prices they 
brought, but the inventory showed nothing more valuable 
than Lyman's sister's spinet, the first instrument of its kind 
brought into this town, on whose ivory keys the moon- 
light played " inaudible melodies " in Longfellow's " Prel- 
ude," and which was valued at $25. For many years 
this antique piano was in Sudbury village, but to-day is 
again to be seen in the parlor of this inn, where Miss 
Jerusha used to play on it the " Battle of Prague," and 
to whose accompaniment she would sing, " in a thin and 
decorous voice," the strains of " Highland Mary," once so 
fashionable. Some of the heirlooms of the house became 
the property of Mr. Howe's distant relative. Miss Eaton, 
including " fair Princess Mary's pictured face," a half 
length mezzotint engraving of a daughter of George IL 
Here came to an honorable repose 

" The sword the landlord's grandsire bore 
In the rebellious days of yore," 

the scabbard immovably rusted within its sheath, its hilt 
mounted with ivory and silver. And to her came the 
silver spurs worn by Colonel How at Concord fight, and 
his silver buckles for stock, knees, and shoes. But gone 
are many furnishings which have figured in descriptions 
of the "Wayside Inn," like the little desk in the tap- 
room, where the tipplers' score was set down, like the 
pewter flagons before whose spicy vapors sat grave depu- 



22 THE WAYSIDE INN, 

ties, with perchance a parson or a magistrate. Gone from 
the window-sash, but still preserved for us to-day, is that 
invitation, homely but redolent of good cheer, almost the 
only thing save the bare walls which takes us to the good 
old days of the Red Horse Tavern, scratched on a window- 
pane June 24, 1774, by "William Molineaux, Jr., Esq.," 
son of a patriot friend of Adams and Otis : 

" What do you think, 
Here is good drink, 
Perhaps you may not know it. 
If not in haste do stop and taste, 
You merry folks will show it." 

The poet of the Wayside Inn did not attempt to 
dignify this rhyme by transferring it to the " Prelude " to 
his " Tales," after asking Miss Eaton to copy it for him, 
but he included a reference to it in his description of the 
house, as 

" Flashing on the window-pane, 
Emblazoned with its light and shade. 
The jovial rhymes that still remain. 
Writ near a century ago. 
By the great Major Molineaux, 
Whom Hawthorne has immortal made." 

Longfellow here chose to connect by way of compli- 
ment the hero of Hawthorne's imaginary tar-and-feathery 
story with the author of this jingle, and the great novelist 
thanked the great poet for the line in a letter written 
from Concord, Jan. 12, 1864: "It gratifies my mind to 
find my own name shining in your verse, — even as if I 
had been gazing up at the moon, and detected my own 
features in its profile." 



ITS HISTORY AND LITERATURE. 2$ 

I confess that there is something pathetic in the 
extinction of an honorable race, even of innkeepers, 
whose gradual decline touches us like the ruin of a royal 
family, " fallen from their high estate," and forced to eat 
the bread of exile. But now behold the resurrection — 
not of this family, but of this house, under the wand of 
the magician, and tell me if even the poet's art has ever 
wrought a metamorphosis more sudden or more complete 
than this. 

It is possible that Longfellow stopped, when a young 
man, at the Red Horse Tavern on his way to New York 
to sail for Europe ; but the only visit we know him to 
have made was after Lyman Howe's death. Writing in 
his journal Oct. 31, 1862, he says : 

" Drive with Fields to the old Red Horse Tavern in 
Sudbury — alas ! no longer an inn ! A lovely valley, 
the winding road shaded by grand old oaks before the 
house. A rambling, tumble-down old building, two 
hundred years old." And when he came to sing of it in 
verse his prose is thus transformed — 

" A region of repose it seems, 
A place of slumber and of dreams, 
Remote among the wooded hills ! " 

And of the house — 

"Built in the old Colonial Day 
When men lived in a grander way, 
With ampler hospitality ; 
A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall, 
Now somewhat fallen to decay, 
With weather-stains upon the wall, 
And chimneys huge, and tiled, and tall." 



24 THE WAYSIDE INN, 

He immediately resolved to make this old house, hence- 
forth rechristened as " the Wayside Inn," the scene of the 
meeting of friends who, like the pilgrims of Chaucer, were 
to tell their tales " one autumn night " when 

" Across the meadows bare and brown 
The windows in the way side inn 
Gleamed red with firelight through the leaves 
Of woodbine, hanging from the eaves 
Their crimson curtains rent and thin." 

In his journal of November ii he speaks of having com- 
pleted five of the "Tales" supposed to have been told 
here ; on the i8th he finished the " Prelude," and early in 
the following spring his ** Sudbury Tales," as he first 
called them, were in press. PubHshed in the following 
November as " Tales of a Wayside Inn," fifteen thou- 
sand copies were at once sold, and they took their place 
with the most popular of the poet's compositions, and soon 
a Wayside Inn became ike Wayside Inn forevermore. 
Longfellow admitted to an interviewer that he drew his 
idea not only from Chaucer, but from the Decameron of 
Boccaccio, and that the inn served as a framework for the 
tales. " They are drawn," says his biographer, " from 
various sources. To Mr. Longfellow belongs the charm 
of their telling, often with much amphfication and adorn- 
ment. In perhaps only one instance, * The Birds of 
Killingworth,' is the story of his own invention." 

In the " Prelude" Longfellow introduces his friends, 
who are to tell their stories 

" before the firelight shedding over all 
The splendor of its ruddy glow. 
Filling the parlor large and low," 



ITS HISTORY AND LITERATURE. 2$ 

after the landlord has opened with that best known of 
them all, " Paul Revere's Ride." He first introduces us 
to " a student of old books and days," Henry Ware 
Wales. This, one of the least known of all the " dramatis 
personcs," graduated at Harvard College in 1838 in the 
same class with James Russell Lowell, William W. Story, 
Dr. George B. Loring, and among the very few still liv- 
ing, Mr. William I. Bowditch and Dr. Samuel L. Abbot. 
He studied medicine, but never practised ; was brought to 
Longfellow's attention by his great love of rare volumes, 
lived much abroad, and died in Paris in 1856 after a 
surgical operation. One of his brothers was the late 
George W. Wales, a munificent patron of art in Boston. 
Then there was the 

" young Sicilian 
In sight of yEtna born and bred," 

Professor Luigi Monti, the only survivor of this immortal 
band. 

" A Spanish Jew from Alicant 

With aspect grand and grave was there," 

Israel Edrehi, 

" Vendor of silks and fabrics rare. 

Well versed was he in Hebrew books, 
Talmud and Targum and the lore 
Of Kabala," 

and from him Longfellow derived much of the rabbinical 
learning which he introduced into the " Golden Legend." 
The " theologian from the school of Cambridge on the 
Charles " was Professor Treadwell, of the Divinity School, 
who passed many sumn^ers at the inn, as did the " poet," 
Dr. Parsons, 



26 THE WAYSIDE INN, 

" Who did not find his sleep less sweet 
For music in some neighboring street." 

In his poem on " Guy Fawkes's Day in Sudbury Inn " 
Parsons brings Longfellow into the company there, even 
as Longfellow had already brought them together in his 
greater poem, and with that freedom from jealousy just 
alluded to, Parsons 

" to sweeten the toast 
Gave the noblest of poets Massachusetts can boast ! 
Famous now is the house in whose halls he hath been, 
For his muse hath made sacred old Sudbury Inn ! " 

Lastly there was the musician, 

" Every feature of his face 
Revealing his Norwegian race," 

Ole Bull, " the angel of the violin; " and when its music 
ceased, 

" began 
A clamor for the landlord's tale," 

who then opens the series 

" In idle moments, idly told," 

until all the tales are finished, when 

" Farewell ! the portly landlord cried ; 
Farewell ! the parting guests replied. 
But little thought that nevermore 
Their feet would pass that threshold o'er." 



ITS HISTORY AND LITERATURE. 2/ 

And now my " Tale of a Wayside Inn " is told, the 
story of the lives and fortunes of Adam and Lyman, of 
David and Ezekiel. We have seen how the oldest and 
most famous inn of the country, the " Red Horse Tavern," 
disappeared, and on its site arose the " Wayside Inn," 
now moss-grown with tradition, and bathed in the after- 
glow of a poet's imagination. Hither began to wend 
their way pilgrims from this land and from all lands, 
until their number was swollen to thousands in these 
later years, many of whom had never heard of the " Red 
Horse Tavern," but to all of whom the " Wayside Inn " 
had become a household word. And one wiser and 
more prescient than the rest wrote : " The time will 
surely come when the sign of the Red Horse will swing 
before the Wayside Inn again, and pilgrims from far and 
near, from Boston and Sicily and Alicant, students, musi- 
cians, theologians, poets, shall gather in the autumn 
evenings around the blazing fires, enjoyers of a finer hos- 
pitality than any known of yore." 

And lo ! the prophet's words fall true, and again the 
doors of the "Wayside Inn" fly open to the expected 
guests ; the descendants of the men of earlier days re- 
call around these tables the "good old colony times;" 
and perchance a twentieth century gallant may write on 
a newer pane : 

" What do yoti think, 
Here is good drink. 
Perhaps you may not know it." 

Mr. Governor and fellow-members, let me be your 
toast-master to-day. Representing indirectly four gener- 
ations of worthy hosts, let me wish " renewed prosperity, 
long, aye, a still longer life, to the Red Horse Tavern of 
ancient Sudbury ! " 



^B^f*=°^«>«H 




